Since we are still hovering around President’s Day, I might stop here to say a few words about it.
Originally, and officially, the day was set aside to recognize the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The day is now understood as a celebration, homage, to the lives of all the U.S. Presidents. It has been a long standing tradition that the office of the President is one of honor, courage, honesty, and high moral standards, one that serves the people. Hence, the reverence of the day. I fear that this honored reputation has now been tarnished forever.
But there have been a lot of different presidents over the years. A lot of good ones. President John F. Kennedy has always stood out to me, mainly because of his tragic death. Aa a president, he stands in the rankings in the 8th to 12th range on most polls.
At any rate, there is an interesting story about, not him, but his casket. After he was shot on that fateful day in Dallas, they took him to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. But, they had to get his body back to Washington, D.C. They couldn’t very well just throw a blanket over him and wheel him out. No, they needed a casket. So a casket was ordered from Dallas undertaker Vernon O’Neal by Secret Service agent Clint Hill.
When the coffin finally got there, they placed JFK inside and began to wheel him out, and then onto the flight for Washington. They were abruptly stopped by Dr Earl Rose, the Dallas County Medical Examiner. Rose told them, by law, the autopsy had to be performed in Dallas because that’s where JFK was killed. He physically barred their way.
Well, the SS Agents weren’t having any of this. They wanted to get the President back to D.C. and they wanted to do it now. But Rose, the medical examiner wasn’t budging an inch. Tempers were getting hot at this point, so they called in a judge to overrule the medical examiner. He sided with the medical examiner instead, saying “It’s just another homicide as far as I’m concerned.”
The Secret Service men were frayed to say the least. I can’t even imagine, actually. And in their “protection” of the president, they showed they were ready to draw their guns to get him out of there. They got behind the coffin, started wheeling it out, and used it as sort of a battering ram to move the Dallas police, et al, out of the way.
Of course, they took JFK back to Washington, but then there was the matter of this casket. First of all, it was all bloodstained because of the magnitude of JFK’s head wounds. And obviously, this would not have been the family’s choice for his burial anyway. So that casket sat in a secure Washington warehouse. Later, there were reports that Vernon O’Neal had received an offer of $100,000 for the coffin so that it could be put on display as a relic of the assassination. But it wasn’t his to sell.
The family finally had to deal with this. The assassination occurred on November 22, 1963. It was on the 18th of February, 1966, that the Kennedy family requested the Air Force to dispose of it.
So they did. Yep, they filled that casket with sandbags, encased it in a solid pine box, then drilled over 40 holes into the structure. It was bound with metal banding tape and finally fitted with parachutes.
It was a big dang load. The casket was then taken aboard a C130 transport plane. They flew about 100 miles out — across the Atlantic Ocean to a selected point that was 9,000 feet deep, and away from shipping lanes.
At 10 a.m. the casket was pushed out of the C130’s tail hatch, with the parachutes engaged to soften the landing. After it hit the water, it immediately sank. The C130 circled the area for 20 minutes to make sure nothing bobbed back up to the surface. And that, as they say, was the end of that.
Well, except somewhere on the floor of the ocean sits that casket, with that story all its own. The burial of JFK’s coffin. A story I did not know until today, and one of thousands upon thousands in government, that we will never hear about. It makes you wonder about all that might be out there. And it all goes round and round.
“There’s a hole. There’s a hole. There’s a hole on the bottom of the sea.
There’s a log in the hole in the bottom of the sea…”
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“We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.”
― Mother Teresa
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“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”
— John F. Kennedy
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He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed
— Albert Einstein
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